Deposition technologies for coating and plating materials and developing engineered surfaces may include any of a variety of deposition technologies. These deposition technologies may include, for example, vacuum deposition or physical vapor deposition (“PVD”), chemical vapor deposition (“CVD”), sputtering, and ion plating. Generally, these deposition technologies may involve the steps of: (a) preparing and cleaning the surface of the target or substrate; (b) establishing a vacuum or desired pressure level at designated operating parameters; and (c) performing the deposition. Such deposition technologies involve large, expensive, and complex systems, equipment, and machinery.
For example, many such deposition technologies require an expensive, bulky, and complex vacuum system to establish and maintain a vacuum at a designated operating pressure. Such a vacuum system may include, generally, a vacuum chamber, mechanical vacuum pumps, which may be used as roughing and foreline vacuum pumps, a secondary vacuum pump, such as a diffusion pump, a cryo pump, and/or a turbo molecular pump, and complex pressure gauges, such as an ion vacuum gauge. These vacuum systems often require complex piping and plumbing configurations that must be free of leaks so that the precise and desired operating pressures and parameters can be maintained and followed. Such complex piping and plumbing is particularly subject to leakage at turns in the pipes or joints where pipes interface due to interface problems and mechanical vibrations caused by the operation of the vacuum pumps.
Some or all of the vacuum pumps, such as a diffusion pump, may also require a large and complex cooling system that, often, uses hundreds or thousands of gallons of water that must be cooled and circulated prior and during the operation of the vacuum pump. This may require a large and bulky water cooling system that includes a large water storage tank and a refrigeration system to cool the water in the large storage tank.
Because deposition technologies involve such large, expensive, and complex systems, equipment, and machinery, such systems must, generally, be permanently installed at a location. When large parts or components, such as those weighing hundreds or thousands of pounds, or when bulky or hard to ship parts or components need to be coated or plated using one of the deposition technologies, about the only option is to permanently install such a system at or near such large or bulky components. This allows such large and bulky components to be moved only a short distance to be coated or plated.
Unfortunately, because this is such an expensive option, it is often cost prohibitive. The high expenses include, not only the cost in procuring the real estate and equipment, and in setting up such complex systems, but in maintaining the equipment and in hiring and employing personnel with the special expertise needed to successfully operate and maintain such systems. Problems also exist in designing a deposition technology system. All such systems require custom design work to meet the particular needs and circumstances of the installation. Turnkey deposition technology systems simply do not exist. As has been illustrated, the design, installation, operation, and maintenance of deposition technology systems are complex and expensive, and, as a result, the coating or plating of large and bulky components using deposition technologies is often not available, even though such large and bulky components may greatly benefit from the significant advantages offered by such deposition technologies.
In some cases, the availability of certain components or parts is so critical that, from either a safety and/or a financial standpoint, the risk of a shipping delay or lost shipment, no matter how small, is too great a risk to take, even if significant advantages could be gained through coating or plating. For example, a reactor vessel head stud that is used in a nuclear power plant is so crucial and unique, that the risk of a shipping delay or lost shipment during a plant outage, such as, for example, during a fuel reload at a nuclear power plant that occurs every couple of years or so, is too great to take. For example, for every day that a nuclear plant is kept off line because of a delay, hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars may be lost. Thus, certain components or parts are so crucial that they would never be shipped to another location for plating or coating using deposition technologies, in spite of all of the significant advantages that may be realized through such deposition technologies.